New Life LIVE

Brian Perez: Hey everyone, welcome to New Life Live. I'm your host, Brian Perez, and we're going to be in the studio for two hours today to talk to you about whatever struggles you're going through, whether it's grief, anxiety, or depression. We can talk to you here at New Life Live.

Mental health awareness month was last month, so maybe you don't hear as much talk about it. We talk about it all the time. Grab an open line. 1-800-229-3000 is our number. We've got licensed marriage and family therapist Dr. Jackie McHarris here, as well as clinical psychologist Dr. Alice Benton. Alice, what's on your mind to start us off today?

Alice Benton: I want to give a forewarning to parents of young children because I'll be talking about some ugly struggles with death, particularly thoughts of death. Have you ever wanted a family member or friend to die? Have you ever wanted to die yourself, even asked God to take your life or plotted your own suicide?

I bring up these ugly questions because we know that many in our audience may be struggling with these very thoughts today, or you have at some time because a lot of you have had the courage to call us and admit it to us. These kind of thoughts can plague and agonize a person for years, and some people even have them on a daily basis. I've shared before that I had a death wish for a person in my life.

I was shocked that I had it, a very non-violent, opposed to violence person, so why would I have a death wish for someone else? People that have these kinds of thoughts, whether it's a fantasy about a murder-suicide, whether a person might consider choosing a building or which bridge they might use in their suicide, or perhaps they've held a weapon in their own hands, these are not uncommon things for people to go through, but we don't talk about it.

When I had the thought myself, I was very startled to have a death wish thought about someone in my life. What I want to tell everyone who has had these thoughts: you're not crazy, and you're not evil for having the thought. Rather, you're probably very wounded, overwhelmed, and spread too thin. It is manifesting in a thought that of course can become evil if we massage it, fantasize it, plan it out. If we keep it to ourselves, it will become powerful.

I believe there's spiritual warfare involved because the enemy wants to take that thought and expand it and have us put it into action, wanting us to believe that that's the solution to the problem that we're facing. Here are three things I invite you all to do, and this is what I needed to do with my own death wish.

Confess, because the Bible says when we confess to others, they can pray for us and be healed. We have to be very careful who we choose to confess to. Part of the healing from these thoughts is to be willing to go even into the ugly details of what you have considered doing to yourself or to someone else.

Then we have to process that hurt that generated the thought. There's always a need in hurt. With suicidal or homicidal thoughts, the need usually is you need space from that abusing person, you need justice, acknowledgment for how you've been hurt. You probably need an apology and amends that you may never get, but God's healing process through counseling helps you to receive those needs even if you can't receive it from the people in your life. If you're struggling with any of this today, we are equipped to hear about it and to help you.

Jackie McHarris: I think that's such a great topic. Letting everyone know that we are equipped to talk about it is important because so often people won't have these conversations because they're afraid. They think it's going to harm someone to have the conversation, and it's just critically important. So give us a call.

Alice Benton: Or they're going to think if I share this with my friend, they're going to think I've lost my mind or something, and they just don't feel that they can open up. Although I gave the warning about young people, we know these thoughts are increasing in our young people.

Brian Perez: Hey, did you know we are now on TikTok? Yeah, it's just another way that we're trying to meet people right where they are. We meet them with truth, hope, and biblical wisdom. It is a great place to catch short moments from the show to share with someone who might need encouragement. You can search @NewLifeMinistries on TikTok or click the TikTok icon in the footer at NewLife.com.

So much going on there at NewLife.com. You can sign up for our daily devotional, our newsletter to find out what it is that we're doing here, find out the latest about our webinars and our intensives. Again, go to NewLife.com. You can also follow us on social media, make a donation towards what we do here at New Life.

You can also submit your questions online via email or you can leave us a voicemail. That's especially if you can't call in during the show. If you're listening right now, you can probably call in and ask your question. We've got Dr. Jackie McHarris and Dr. Alice Benton here for two hours, and we'd love to hear from you. 1-800-229-3000 is the number to call in.

If you want to leave us a voicemail or an email, the instructions are at NewLife.com/radio. Here's a question that was submitted online. It's from Lynn, who listens on SiriusXM channel 131. The question is, "I do not feel that I love as I should when people express love for me. I'm married with children and grandchildren. I suffer from some depression, seasonal, etc., but usually manage without meds as they often make me feel numb.

But the issue I'm asking about today, I don't believe is a depression issue." Lynn says, "I have a hard time believing that I'm loved by the people that love me most. Even my closest friends who express love for me. I've prayed a lot about this matter. I don't really feel connected to any of those who express love to me.

Of course I have feelings for my husband and family and friends and have social interactions with them all and would do anything for them, but I often have to just feel like a hypocrite. I don't care most of the time to interact with people. I'm very good at putting on a good front. I do want to love more and I want to be a loving person. What can I do?" Dr. Jackie, what do you say to Lynn?

Jackie McHarris: The first thing that popped into my head is that sounds very much like an emotional avoider. An emotional avoider tends to wall themselves off, and that wall prevents the sensations of love getting in. I tell people a closed mouth doesn't get fed. If you are closed off, if your heart is closed off, it's not receiving the love.

I had a situation with a friend years ago who said to me, "I don't know why he tells you these things. I told him why you talk to her about that stuff, you know she doesn't have feelings." I have feelings, but I realized in that conversation that my friends and family couldn't feel the love I had for them. They couldn't feel the depth of love I had for them.

So I began to work on feeling what they were feeling, and I had to go into prayer. I had a supervisor that told me to imagine myself sitting in Jesus's lap and then ask him, what is my issue with emotion? Why am I so disconnected? I waited for Jesus to speak, and he did.

He showed me some things about my life and my childhood, and he guided me to therapy and to some support. It changed the way I do therapy. For Lynn, I hope that you'll get the book, *How We Love*, and read it, and go on the website and learn some more about yourself and your love style. I hope that she can get some relief from walling herself off, because that disconnect is really about protecting herself. She's also preventing herself from getting the love she wants.

Alice Benton: Lynn, I'm going to start on the surface and then go deeper. My husband for probably years in our early marriage got me flowers on a regular basis, and it actually agitated me because it wasn't the right love language. Saving money was much more valuable to me than flowers that died in a couple days.

I didn't have the assertiveness skills at the time to tell him, and so instead, I was feeling unloved while he was making this great act of love on a regular basis. It may be that the people around you don't know how to speak your love language, and you might not even know what your own love language is.

I challenge you to consider, to imagine, to let your mind get creative. Do you have any idea what acts, what way of treating you would lead to you feeling loved by your family? But that's just surface level, although it's important. You might also have the facade that I had in early marriage where I acted like I was happy, I acted like I enjoyed those flowers, because I didn't have the ability and the knowledge that sharing my discomfort would have actually been more loving to my husband, and he probably would have received it well. He would have stopped buying me flowers, which he did eventually when I finally told him.

Maybe you struggle to share messy thoughts and feelings honestly with the people around you. That's a very common struggle and it fits with the avoider attachment style that Jackie was talking about. Two final points here: you might have unresolved problems with these people in your life, so that even if they are kind or they do treat you well, the pain you hold might overwhelm those good interactions. Your brain and your heart and your body are reminding you of all those unfinished issues that still need attention.

The last one is the deepest, meaning historically deep, because perhaps your parents did not know how to show love to you in a way that you could receive. Jackie and I hear many stories, Brian, of parents who provided physically. There was a roof, there were clothes, there was food on the table, but I never heard "I love you," never got a hug, never got a snuggle. There wasn't physical touch maybe after the infancy stage, the toddler stage. All these areas are worth your exploration, and probably it would serve you to do that exploration with the help of a counselor. Let us connect you with a counselor in our network by giving a call to New Life so that we can do that for you.

Brian Perez: If your situation is similar to Lynn's, you can call us today. We're going to be here for two hours at 1-800-229-3000. You ladies touched on something. How is it that we express, how do we tell people what our love language is? You would think that, let's take your husband for example, Alice. He could have just said, "Why aren't you just happy with the fact that I'm giving you flowers?" So you're afraid to tell him because you might hurt his feelings or something.

Alice Benton: Defensiveness is such a common reaction. "What? I've been doing this great thing for you. How could you complain about it?" It does take growing skills on both sides of the equation that someone like me would have the courage to speak up but to know how to do it gently and lovingly. "Thank you so much that you love me by buying flowers. I realize I have some fears about money. Can we experiment? I think I'd feel more loved if you tell me how you're saving money by not buying me things that I don't need. Could we try that? I think I'd feel really loved that way." My invitation is gentle, it's an attractive invitation, and it's not accusing him. It's me taking responsibility for what I want and need.

Jackie McHarris: My love language is words of affirmation, and my husband's is acts of service. When I complained one day years and years ago, "You don't love me," he said, "Of course I love me, I go to work every day." I thought, "You would do that anyway. You would go to work anyways, how you're made is who you are, you got to have a place to live and you got to have food to eat."

But we studied the love languages and we practiced each other's love languages and paid attention to how the other reacted and responded. I noticed that if I prepare a special meal or put his laundry away, just anything small that I just always thought of as just it was a thing that needed to be done so I did it, he feels deeply loved.

For me, whenever I'm speaking somewhere, he introduces me and I hear all the accolades and the warm fuzzies and I'm like, "Oh my gosh, he loves me." Hearing him talk about me in a kind way feels like love to me. We had to learn that. We had to learn about love styles and love languages. We had to learn what ours were and then we had to learn how do I show up in a way that feels loving to him even though it's not what I need?

That's the hard thing. We're loving people in the way we want to be loved. I'm telling him all the amazing things about himself, and that's going in one ear and out the other. He feels much more loved when I do small things around the house or I handle a problem for him.

Pay attention to what you get a big, good response from. If you bake somebody something out of the blue and they just rave about it, maybe that's their love language, the acts of service. If you take a day off to spend with someone and they are just so happy and profusely appreciative, that's their love language, just quality time. Some people, you bring them flowers, even just five-dollar flowers that you got off the corner, that gift meant you were thinking of them and that feels like love. It's about paying attention and being open and communicating and not assuming bad when you say, "I really don't need flowers every week. I'd rather save the money and watch our bank account grow." That's not bad, but it gets scary to share that. My husband bought three dozen long-stemmed roses one Valentine's Day and he came to the door and I opened it and I screamed.

Alice Benton: Scream of joy or scream of anger?

Jackie McHarris: Anger. In our early days of marriage, money was really tight. All I could think of was how much money did he just spend on this that's going to die tomorrow? I totally understand that. My husband's never bought me roses again. But he gets that I'd much rather have a hundred-dollar steak than a bunch of roses that are going to die. If we don't share those things, then we feel not seen and not known because we haven't let ourselves be seen and known. If you know these things about yourself, be open to sharing them with your partner, and in a soft way. I loved the way that you brought the conversation to your husband.

Alice Benton: Quiz me, Jackie. Let's see if we can remember all the love languages. I think I'm missing one. You've said words of affirmation, which is basically praise and words of encouragement. Acts of service, I like it when somebody does something, when you fix something in the house. Physical affection, touching, hugging, snuggling. Quality time. I want us to be paying attention to each other, eyeball to eyeball, hanging out with each other doing something fun. Am I missing one?

Jackie McHarris: Gifts.

Alice Benton: Gifts. The one I forgot was touch.

Brian Perez: Really quick just to all the florists who might be listening right now: we love you guys. We totally support you. We're not trying to hopefully flower sales won't go down or anything, but thank you for what you do. Flowers are beautiful, but they're not for Jackie or Alice, so keep that in mind.

Give us a call. 1-800-229-3000 is our number. We're going to go to the phones in just a little bit. In the meantime, I'll let you guys know about our matching gift challenge that's going on right now. If you were listening last week, it was $250,000, and then this week we announced that it had grown to $300,000.

That's because one of our generous, already generous donors decided to put more towards it. This person really understands what we're doing here at New Life. I don't know personally who this person is, but maybe they've benefited before. Maybe they've called in, maybe they've had a family member who called in and we helped them.

We've helped so many people over the last almost 40 years and we want to continue to do what we're doing. Right now we've got this matching gift challenge. It's $300,000, so whatever you can give will be doubled. We look forward to seeing what the Lord is going to do with this. We've got a few ways that you can submit your donation. You can do that online at NewLife.com/match or you can text the word MATCH to 28950.

You can call in too to 1-800-NEW-LIFE. You can send a check in the mail if you want. We've got our new mailing address there on our website NewLife.com. Scroll down to the footer and you'll see the P.O. Box there. Thank you so much for whatever you can do. We look forward to what the Lord has in store for New Life Ministries in the years and decades to come. It all starts with what you do today, the seed you plant. Do whatever the Lord puts upon your heart at NewLife.com/match or text MATCH to 28950. Going to take a short break and then we'll be back with your phone calls. Linda, we'll go to you first when we come back on New Life Live.

Linda is listening to us in Olympia. Thank you, Linda, for calling 1-800-229-3000. You're on with Dr. Jackie McHarris and Dr. Alice Benton. Welcome.

Linda: Thank you very much for taking my call. I have a son who is 43 now and has had schizophrenia. He was diagnosed when he was 20, but I think he had it before. My question is, he feels like God has told him many times that God was going to heal him, but that he maybe had to do this or that or something.

He's given away clothes and a bike. He's now been shaving his head, and it has to be with a razor that you would just do on your face. He does cut himself sometimes and his head will bleed. He gives up different foods and everything because he wants to be healed so bad.

He wants to get married and have a family and it breaks my heart. My other son and I just struggle with all this. My husband passed away almost four years in November, so I don't have his support. He was a devotional counselor, so he was helpful, but now he is gone. When he hears the voices telling him, or he thinks that's God, he just doesn't know what to do and doesn't understand why God doesn't heal him when he does all this stuff. He gets these weird pains sometimes in his chest or his ears. He is on medication.

Jackie McHarris: Is he seeing a therapist, Linda?

Linda: Yes, he does. He has a really wonderful Christian, well, he actually has two, but one is more of a friend that he does see. I think because he can't understand all what's happening, they help him and tell him things. But when these things happen, I don't know what to say to him except I don't know why God allows this. God doesn't cause these things, it just happens and we don't understand it all.

Alice Benton: Linda, in all this pain, is that your main question for us? What do I say to him when he lays out this "God will heal me if I do this next thing"?

Linda: Yeah, that's part of it. I keep telling him you don't have to shave your head, especially with a razor like that.

Alice Benton: And if that's part of it, what's the other part of your question?

Linda: I don't know what I say to him, how can I help him? Is there anything? I am going to look at your website. I keep not doing that, but I am going to do that. If there's anything about schizophrenia on there. When I listen to most Christian TV things, nobody really addresses that issue. I wish they would.

Alice Benton: Linda, as concerning as your son's behavior is, he has auditory hallucinations. I want to start with you because your heart is so very burdened and you want of course to have the right answers to give him to questions that don't necessarily have a right answer. Would you tell us what is the strongest emotion you feel when you watch your son suffering and you watch God not healing him? What do you feel?

Linda: Sometimes I feel angry and anxiety and just so sorry for him to have this life when he's always wanted to have a Christian wife and marry and have children.

Alice Benton: Linda, have you ever felt partly responsible for how he suffers?

Linda: Maybe sometimes because nobody knows what causes schizophrenia. When we were younger we had a boat and he fell while he was sitting in the drive-through chair and he did fall about a foot and a half, maybe. I always wondered if that could have caused it. Also at birth he was stuck in the canal and so they had to do a Caesarean.

Brian Perez: Linda, hold on the line really quick. We've got to take a break but we want to continue our conversation with you here on New Life Live. 1-800-229-3000 is the number. We're going to be here for the next 90 minutes.

Hey, it's Becky Brown. I am so excited to launch our 99 for the 1 partner initiative. Every day we hear from people all over the world who are looking for hope. They've been lost in a relationship struggle, addiction, anxiety, depression, all kinds of ways. It reminds us of the story in Luke 15 where the shepherd leaves the 99 to go rescue the one.

We've seen God work in the lives of so many people over the years here at New Life, and we want to invite you to be part of what God is doing. 99 for the 1 is our partner program that you can give to the ministry on a monthly basis to make sure that we continue to reach out to the lost. Call 1-800-NEW-LIFE or NewLife.com/99for1.

Let's go back to Linda in Olympia, and she's calling in about her 43-year-old son with schizophrenia. She says no other Christian talk show talks about this kind of stuff. Well, we do here at New Life Live. We talk about the issues that other places don't want to talk about, so you can call in with your questions as well to 1-800-229-3000. Right before the break, Linda, you were talking about a couple of things that happened to your son that you think might have led to this. What do you think of that?

Jackie McHarris: Linda, you said that when he was little he had a traumatic brain injury from falling on the boat, falling a couple of feet.

Linda: Yeah, we never took him to a doctor or anything. He seemed fine at the time and it never even crossed my mind back then. But you've been thinking and trying to pinpoint what it could have been. Then you had a traumatic birth. All those things could impact it and could also impact you.

Jackie McHarris: Alice was asking about you. This has been lifelong. You mentioned your husband had passed a few years ago, four years ago, but this has been a lifelong challenge. Has he been dealing with this all of his adult life?

Linda: Yes. I think it kind of started when he was maybe 17, 18.

Jackie McHarris: Do you know if he was ever into drugs at all? Maybe smoked pot?

Linda: Maybe marijuana, but I don't think he did any of those other ones. And it started around that time. He probably did some drinking and some marijuana.

Jackie McHarris: There's evidence out there, research that says that teenagers smoking marijuana is dangerous if there is mental illness in your family tree and your DNA. Marijuana can be the key that unlocks schizophrenia in adolescents. It's very possible that he could have smoked something that unlocked this. Are there other people in the family that have mental illness?

Linda: Yes, in some of my cousins that are in his age group because my mom and then all of her sisters have children and some of them have issues, but nothing like schizophrenia. They maybe had some bipolar stuff like that. It seemed like the last of my mom was one of eight girls and then they had one boy.

Alice Benton: So there have been struggles throughout the family, but your family is dealing with the most severe presentation of it. I want to give you a couple of thoughts of how you might proceed. The first one might surprise you, it's counterintuitive: one of the best ways you can love your son is to take care of yourself.

When you're in anger and in anxiety and you're striving to get the right answer for him, it is not your best version of yourself. Our best version is when we can access serenity, which feels impossible to do in your situation. I think it is humanly impossible, but it's not impossible with God and with the right help around us.

That right help probably entails for you a NAMI group, National Alliance on Mental Illness. I've worked with other families with a child with schizophrenia, and the parents have found such support in NAMI, understanding strategies from other parents who have already walked that part of the journey previously.

I'd also have you, Linda, consult with his therapist. It's great that he's in therapy. There are actually a couple of signs that your son in dealing with schizophrenia, he's managing awfully well considering the extremes we know it can go to. But that doesn't diminish your pain at all.

Consulting with his therapist and considering having a family therapy session so that you can get equipped by his therapist who knows him so well. How should I respond in situations like these? But lastly, usually the best answer when someone is in pain is not to give them the "this is why God isn't healing you" answer.

The theological reason why, that actually hardly ever helps, and we don't even know what that answer is. Rather, being a loving, empathetic listener. "Son, this is hard. I don't know why either. I don't have all the answers either. Sometimes I do say I know that healing will come in the afterlife, but not at this time." So please, turn your focus into taking care of yourself primarily, because then you'll be able to show up better for your son.

Jackie McHarris: In addition to what Alice is saying, and I agree with everything she said, I would encourage you to have him think about the little micro-changes that may be happening in his life. Sometimes our life is changing and getting better and we can't see it because we're in it, so we don't see the change.

There's plenty of times where I'm sitting with a client that I see great improvement and I'll ask them how they feel like they're doing in terms of reaching their goals and they feel very far from it. Then I get to share what I see and it's like, "Oh yeah, that's right, I have been doing that."

There might be some places in which things have gotten better. He can lean into that and watch for more as he's doing his work. As Dr. Alice said, he sounds like he's managing. He's taking his medication, he's communicating clearly with you in ways that you can understand. He's there, you didn't give complaints about him wandering and things like that. Seems like he's doing better than most. He can lean into that and watch for more. There may be a need for him to accept the grace that he's living in right now. With this disorder, he still has connection with his family, hopefully friends, maybe wanting to make new friends. So I really appreciate you calling in, but I also agree with Dr. Alice, please take care of yourself.

Alice Benton: Treatment compliance with schizophrenia is so rare. He has a very high level of compliance.

Brian Perez: Linda, thank you for calling us today from Olympia, Washington. Stay on hold and we'll connect you with someone in your area who will be able to assist you. Like you said, you've been meaning to check out our website NewLife.com, so do that. Look for some great articles and resources and books in our store that can help you out.

A friend of mine recently started a podcast about hearing the voice of God. What do we do when there's someone in our life like in Linda's life who feels that they're hearing the voice of God when it may not be that?

Alice Benton: It's a pretty sensitive topic that has to be approached with great care. On the one hand, we want to boost and encourage decisions of faith and the desire to seek God, while also in cases of schizophrenia or psychosis, being willing to gently question that we know that schizophrenia often includes auditory hallucinations.

Whether or not a person struggles with psychosis, all of us have to try to discern what is God's voice, what is our own thought, what is a message that comes from another source. The willingness to say all of us need to try to discern that and it's difficult for everyone, but an auditory hallucination is certainly different than hearing from God. Most of us don't hear God's voice directly. It's incredibly rare to hear God in an auditory way. It can happen, but it's very rare. So it's helping to parse that out and having that gentle discussion with a person suffering from psychosis.

Jackie McHarris: In times where I've had that conversation, we've usually tested the reality of whatever the statement is. Sometimes it's not even a something that's possible to do, or it's something bad or harmful. Then we can go to scripture: would God cause you to do this harmful thing? Helping them to learn how to discern, because it's very sensitive and you have to really be in it and be in relationship and walk closely. Having someone to do that with, I think, can make the journey of schizophrenia a little bit easier.

Brian Perez: And we can put you in touch with someone when you call us here at New Life. Our main number is 1-800-NEW-LIFE. You can also visit our website NewLife.com. But if you've got a question for Dr. Jackie McHarris or Alice Benton, call in to 1-800-229-3000.

In a world that constantly tells us who we should be, it's easy to feel confused about who we truly are, but scripture offers a powerful and clear answer. Your identity is not defined by your past, your struggles, the labels others place on you. It's defined by God. Counselor, co-host, and workshop leader JJ West is going to be talking about this in the "Identity in Christ: What the Bible Says" webinar. It's happening next week, Thursday night, June 11th. You can get all the details at NewLife.com. Or if you text the word WEBINAR to 28950, you can get more information and we'll send you a free tip sheet as well called "Five Ways to Live Confidently in Your Identity in Christ." Again, that's next week. 1-800-229-3000 is the number to reach us in the studio today. Let's go to Paula, listening in Washington, D.C. Welcome, Paula, to New Life Live.

Paula: Hello, hi everybody. So at the beginning of the call, I think it was Becky who was saying, had asked the question if we had ever wished a death wish on someone, and I did. I told my husband that I wished that he would just die. He has not been able to forgive me for that.

He keeps proving to me that I'm not his person because he doesn't want to do the work to save our marriage. So we've actually been separated physically since August of last year, even though we still maintain the same household. But I heard she said confess it. I've done that, I've explained it. Of course I confessed it to God. I've processed the hurt that I was in and that I caused him. But I didn't hear what the third thing was. The second part to this question is, I do hate him. I know the Bible says that you can't love God if you hate someone. I don't really know how to process that.

Alice Benton: Paula, would you tell us why you hate your husband?

Paula: Because he's been emotionally abusive. He withholds his support from me, that's his means of punishing me. He withholds his affection, he hasn't been affectionate in years. He just does that to try to control me, especially with the silence.

It really impacted my mental health. The Lord has healed me from that, I'm stronger because of it, but I just don't know how to go forward with that. My husband, Dante, has chosen not to forgive me for saying that to him, and so he just wants to do whatever he can to make my life miserable.

Brian Perez: How long ago did you say that to him?

Paula: Roughly about 10 years ago.

Alice Benton: And how long have you been married?

Paula: It would have been 24 years last week.

Alice Benton: And do you have any minor children still?

Paula: We have one who will be 17 in two weeks.

Alice Benton: So that third thing you were asking about is actually probably right on point for you, because it's understandable that you hate your husband who has not been willing to get help, from the sound of it, and in fact actively tries to hurt you and punish you, withholds affection from you, and you're headed towards a divorce.

The third part of my suggestion was to identify what you need. You hate him, he has hurt you, at times you've wished him dead. What do you need? The things I had listed out were space, justice, acknowledgment, apology, amends. Some of those you will never get from him, at least from the sound of it, unless there's a miracle, unless he gets help.

So for you it will be identifying what you need. But before you tell me what you think that is, have you two ever gotten marital counseling and is he at all open to it at this point? You might be beyond it, but has he ever been willing?

Paula: We came to Intimacy in Marriage, we came to that conference. It was amazing. We came back with a reset and then he went back into the same mode again. He recently went to Every Man's Battle, which I felt he was going to come back at least willing to talk about it. He came back worse.

He just refuses to engage in conversation with me and we just really live separate lives now. I don't know where he is mentally. Physically he's here in this home, but we occupy separate spaces.

Alice Benton: And he struggles with sexual integrity. He's active in his struggle, he just gave into the struggle after Every Man's Battle. Is that right?

Paula: He just refuses to talk about it. He came back worse in the sense that he didn't say anything to me about the conference and we just continued to live separate.

Jackie McHarris: He came back more distant. When you say worse, it was like he's more disconnected, more distant, more resolved to be apart from you.

Paula: Correct.

Jackie McHarris: And he went to Every Man's Battle because he had the sexual integrity issue?

Paula: No, I actually suggested that he go because I knew that that had been a problem before. With the porn addiction, even though he said that he had not been doing it. So I felt like that was going to be the last ditch effort. I was like, maybe you should check this out. He went. I thought that he would at least come back relieved or some glimmer of hope, but he came back even more resolved to just live without me. This has been going on ever since I said that to him that I just wished he would die. He has just been very withdrawn from the marriage.

Jackie McHarris: Have you ever encountered this sensation before? The disconnect, the withholding affection. What was childhood like for you?

Paula: For me, I was raised in a very chaotic home in the sense that my parents argued a lot. There was no physical abuse, but there was a lot of arguing and then there would be the silence for days, sometimes weeks between the two of them. So that was something that going into the marriage I asked my husband, can we not have that? We ever have a disagreement can we at least settle it? He knew that that was my heart towards our marriage and so that's why he uses that to punish me.

Alice Benton: And have you been able to hold back from perpetrating what your parents did to each other?

Paula: Yes, because I like to talk about things and I like to get to the bottom of it. It's like the more I pursue him, the more he withdraws, the more he avoids me.

Alice Benton: Was it the yelling and screaming like your parents when you would pursue?

Paula: Sometimes it would get that way because I was very adamant about getting to the bottom. I'm sorry.

Alice Benton: Of course you desired to solve the problem, but you might have been hot in the way that you went about it. We want to give you a couple of suggestions as we're coming towards a close. You may have some more healing work to do because of the ways you have hurt him.

Even if you two divorce, for the sake of your own conscience and the sake of your 17-year-old. To tell somebody I wish you would die, of course, is a wounding that is very difficult to heal and he's shut down that healing process you've attempted. I would have you ask him, is there something that I can do to help heal the hurt that I've caused both by getting loud and by telling you what I did about death?

Now you may or may not be able to do what he asks, but it's you taking that step of responsibility to try to clean up your side of the street. My guess about your need is that if he again today would say, "I am not getting help for our marriage and I want to continue with this pursuit of separation, divorce," especially if he's still using pornography, you probably need space. Not necessarily a divorce yet, but a legal separation and a stronger physical separation because that can bring clarity to a situation like this.

Brian Perez: Paula, thanks for your phone call and we're going to be in the studio for another hour, so keep calling in. Thanks so much for listening. We hope something you heard will help you live in freedom today. If this content was helpful for you, we would love it if you would take a minute, leave a review, post about it, and rate it. Remember, we have resources and workshops online for you as you continue your journey. Go to NewLife.com to find out more information. And thank you for being part of the New Life community. We know that God desires all of us to live a life of wholeness and healing, and we're so glad that you're here.